Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Romans 8:31-39 is better sung than commented upon. It’s a thrilling, ecstatic hymn of boisterous assurance that God’s purposes will be accomplished. Yet, I will attempt to comment on them. If we sing Paul’s hymn, let’s make sure we sing with understanding. Given the character of these verses, it’s easy…
"An ethic unshaped by eschatology is neither Jesus’ nor Christian.” - Tremper Longman How does an immature culture grow up? Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is about the dangers of being lost in adolescence. By the end of the movie, the viewer is pointed to a road we infer leads to…
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Prolegomena 1. “You’re a pastor,” my new friend says as we sit down, “and you’re a massage therapist. How does that work?” To her, Christianity implies stuffy ideology, a disregard of the physical. A Christian massage therapist is an oddity; a pastor massage therapist is nearly a contradiction in terms.…
54% of Poles think favorably of Americans, only 13% unfavorably, according to Centrum Badania Opinii Spolecznej . Ten years ago, the numbers were 44% and 21% respectively. Twenty years ago, they were 64% and 6%. Back in the 1990s, Americans were the most liked nation among Poles. Now they are…
Stones of Life and Death Of course, the sex of a child is not a choice between light and darkness or life and death. Sex, like circumcision, is a horizontal demarcation, a delegation of roles within humanity. In contrast, the white stone and the black stone within the “liturgical scrotum”…
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John Gray ( Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals , 19) argues that “Among us, science serves two needs: for hope and censorship.” It feeds hope because science is the only institution where progress is evident: “The political projects of the twentieth century have failed, or achieved much…
The bracing premise of John Gray’s Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (xi-xii) is that liberal humanism is grounded in a “superstition” that is “further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions.” That superstition is a belief in progress, which outside of…
In his 1976 study of Godly Man in Stuart England: Anglicans, Puritans and the Two Tables, 1620-70 (Historical Publications) , J. Sears McGee uses the law’s “two tables” to distinguish Anglicans from Puritans. Puritans were men of the “first table,” Anglicans of the second. Both worked with the same “palette…
Visser ( Beyond Fate (Massey Lectures) (CBC Massey Lecture) , 43-4) makes the commonplace observation that Christianity dislodged the honor-shame patterns of the ancient world and replaced it with a sin-guilt nexus. Unlike many, Visser views this as a tremendous gain, even a liberation: “In recognizing wrongdoing as sin, we…
In her Beyond Fate (Massey Lectures) (CBC Massey Lecture ) (15-16) , the always-stimulating Margaret Visser describes the cultural achievement of making a “place” at table. For us Westerners, “Each diner sits on an upright, separate chair drawn up to a table on which is laid his or her ‘place.’…
In the twelfth book his Christian Topography , the sixth-century Italian known as Cosmas the Indian Navigator tries to show that biblical history is consistent with the best records of ancient pagans. “Best” means not -Greek. It’s a highly inaccurate, charming, amusing passage: “But the Chaldaeans and the Medes and…
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